Kellner Says Commerical-Skip Worth $250/year

Steve B writes: "A sequel to Turner CEO: "PVR Users Are Thieves" -- according to this story reported by Broadcasting & Cable, our friend Jamie Kellner says that consumers should be prepared to pay "as much as $250 per year" for the privilege of zapping over commercials. BTW, I'm not being entirely sarcastic when I call Kellner "our friend" -- if we properly exploit this story as an example of why Hollywood wants control over our consumer electronics, Kellner just might dig their graves with his big mouth."

Comments

Why the fuss?

[kyz]

I'm not sure why broadcasters are up in arms about PVRs skipping adverts. Anyone who records a program rather than watch it live is going to forward through the adverts anyway, when they get around to watching it. Advertisers already know this, and they're still willing to pay for advertising because most people watch TV programs live rather than record them.

Surely, what broadcasters are worried about is the whole concept of a TV recording machine that people watch instead of live TV. The fact it skips adverts in the recording is just icing. I think they're mostly worried about losing the eyeballs of the lucrative AB demographic -- high-earning types who only watch a few select TV programs anyway. But don't they think that attacking their own viewers and branding them "thieves" is a bit misguided? How is that going to get people to watch the TV more?

Tough fucking shit

[dh003i]

Like anyone actually buys crap from ads on TV anyways.

A new technology comes along, which allows us users to save time, not having to spend so much time out of our busy day watching commercials, that's just fucking tough for advertisers.

Furthermore, intelligent advertisers have started to insert "ads" into TV shows. For example, All My Children promotes cosmetics company Revlon within the show, by having one of their actresses take a job at Revlon within the show.